News

NMM version 0.34.0Last week we slipped out version 0.34.0 of the Nexus Mod Manager on the sly. I was busy prepping for a long weekend trip away to Amsterdam for the girl’s birthday so wasn’t able to announce the news at the time, so consider this a belated announcement of the new features in 0.34.0.

This latest NMM version introduces endorsements to the program which now lets you endorse all the mods you’ve downloaded from NMM itself. We didn’t like the idea of mod authors potentially missing out on endorsements because people were using NMM more than the sites. I’m not entirely sure that was actually happening but I think promoting and making the ability to endorse the files you download easier is a good idea none-the-less. NMM should sync up with your endorsement state on the sites, and the sites should sync with NMM, so if you endorse files on NMM then your download history will show you’ve endorsed the file on the site. Similarly if you endorse a file on the site the next time you check your mod versions your endorsements should also be reflected properly within NMM.

With endorsements out of the way we’re now working on a proper categorisation system within NMM. We were half-way there before the download system changes and the work on the endorsements so now it’s just a matter of finishing it off.

Notification systemPremium members receive several upgrades and features above and beyond normal members on the site. Past no ads, faster download speeds and access to premium-only download servers, one of those features is the ability to be notified about updates to the site, updates to your tracked files and notifications when someone has commented on your mods, much like Facebook updates you when someone has posted on your wall or mentioned you in their own posts. It’s probably one of the main reasons why when I post some news on the site you’ll notice there’s a large percentage of Premium Members commenting to begin with; it’s because they get notified about the news straight away.

We make features like the notifications and the complete download history Premium Member only features not because we want to milk money out of you but because we know we can support a couple of thousand people using the features but we can’t support 5 million people using them. Opening up the complete download history to every single member, for example, would likely just bring our database servers down. You can have a complete download history, but the site would be down most of the time. Naturally that wouldn’t be worth it, so we open it up to Premium Members because it’s a much more limited and ergo manageable number of users. Now, with the updates we’ve recently made to the sites and its recent stable performance we think we’re in a position where we can open up the notification system to everyone, rather than just Premium Members.

The irony is, of course, that without the support we receive from Premium Members I wouldn’t be able to afford the improved hardware and programmers who have managed to make this possible. So once again, thanks to those people who not only help to keep the site running, but also make the site better by supporting us and becoming a Premium Member.

Notifications should now be rolled out on every Nexus site, visible on the userbar, and we’ll be monitoring the server performance over the coming days to ensure it’s not going to negatively impact the server performance. If you have any new notifications the little world icon will go from greyscale to coloured, and the number next to it will be greater than 0 and red. In fact, me posting this news should ensure you all have at least one notification waiting for you. So far we’ve opened up notifications for:

New comments on your files

New uploads to files you’re tracking

New comments on files you’re tracking

Nnew files uploaded by your friends

New news updates on the sites

In keeping with how I like to do things you can pick and choose what notifications you receive via your preferences, or choose to turn them off completely if you’re nonplussed about the whole idea. By default a lot of the notification preferences are turned off, so if you like the sound of those notifications you ought to head over to your preferences to turn them on!

And a note to avoid confusion: unlike Facebook where you can be sat on the same page without reloading and receive notification updates, on the Nexus you’ll need to reload the page or browse the site in order to get notifications. You won’t get notifications while idling on the same page. Similarly the notifications are not global across the Nexus sites. You will not receive notifications of new comments for your files on Fallout 3 Nexus if you're browsing Skyrim Nexus, for example. The logistics of the code and the load this would have placed on the servers would have been too great right now. Maybe something for the future, though!